Attention is directed to copending applications: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/342,949, entitled xe2x80x9cRESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR A PRINTING SYSTEM VIA JOB TICKETxe2x80x9d, filed on Jun. 29, 1999, by Thomas A. Myers et al., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/342,713 entitled xe2x80x9cUSER INTERFACE FOR NAVIGATION AND CONTROL OF A PRINTING SYSTEMxe2x80x9d, filed on Jun. 29, 1999, by Jonathan A. Dorsey et al. and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/342,373, entitled xe2x80x9cOPERATOR NOTATION TOOL TIPxe2x80x9d, filed on Jun. 29, 1999, by Thomas A. Myers. The disclosures of these applications are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
This invention relates generally to a system for managing the delivery of print media to a marking engine in a printing system and, more particularly to a method for accelerating paper tray programming.
Electronic printers and printing systems provide the operator or user with as many job programming options and selections as reasonably possible. One very significant programming option is choice of stock, i.e. the print media on which the prints are made. One desirable stock type is ordered stock such as precut tabs, a series of different color sheets, etc. However, when using ordered stock, care must be taken to assure that the correct image is printed on the correct stock throughout the print process. For example, when using precut tabs, one must be sure that the image being printed matches up with the correct tab and that this remains so during the entire printing process. Otherwise, should there be for some reason a mismatch during the printing process, not only will the affected image end up printed on the wrong tab, but the entire sequence of images printed thereafter will be disrupted with the remaining images on the wrong tabs.
The Xerox DT135 and other printers are capable of job streaming which employs an attribute based paper tray selection model. In this model, print jobs are programmed to use paper stocks described by their attributes; the contents of the paper trays are described using these same attributes. The printer then automatically selects the paper trays by comparing stock descriptions. This indirect paper tray selection model is required to allow jobs to be programmed well in advance of printing and to support jobs that contain more stocks than available pick points.
In response to customer requests, production and office printers are offering increasing numbers of stock pick points (a.k.a. paper trays, paper feeders, or special material handlers). The 6180 printer has 5 pick points; The 4xc3x9735 printers have up to 6 pick points. Printers capable of having up to 10 pick points; the number and complexity of the stock attributes supported by these printers are also increasing in order to provide sophisticated printer functionality, e.g. automated recovery and image shift for collated precut tab stock. Examples of stock attributes are: Size, with type in fields for custom sizes; Color, with type in fields for custom colors; Type, with type in fields for collated stock modulus value; Basis Weight; Drilled or not; Stock name (LCDS context) or stock identifier (Constellation context); Basis, e.g. offset, bond, cover (Unique to Constellation).
In Xerox production printers (e.g. DT65, DT135, DT6180) the accuracy of the paper stock description is important because: Pick points are selected automatically by evaluating paper stock attributes. Stock equivalence for purposes of automatic tray switching is determined by comparing paper stock attributes.
A problem with the current approaches of explicit tray programming is it takes too long and is error prone. It""s lengthy because of the number of attributes that need to be set and the fact that some attributes require keyboard entry. Customers have complained about the time and effort required to perform paper tray programming.
A method is needed to accelerate the process of describing the contents of a paper tray and to reduce the possibility of erroneous data entry.
An object of the present invention is to provide an alternative method of paper tray programming in production printers. In this method, paper tray programming is accomplished by providing a user mechanism for copying the group of paper stock attributes that constitute a paper stock description as a single entity. Also described is the use of this mechanism to copy groups of paper stock attributes from job processing instructions or other paper trays. Advantageous features of the present invention include: Programming a paper tray by copying the collection of attributes that constitute the paper stock description as a single entity; Using paper stock description in the job processing instructions as the source for paper tray programming; and Using paper stock description of one tray as the source for paper tray description of other trays.
There is provided a printing system with one or more discrete print media trays, a marking engine and a controller in which prints are produced from a plurality of print jobs by using the controller to control delivery of print media sheets from the one or more discrete print media trays to the marking engine, each of said plurality of print jobs including a plurality of said predefined print media attributes; the one or more discrete print media trays respectively including the print media sheets having a plurality of print media attributes, a method for programming the one or more discrete print media trays, comprising: selecting one of said a plurality of print jobs; correlating said plurality of said predefined print attributes of the selected one of said plurality of print jobs to said plurality of print media attributes of the print media sheets stored in said one or more discrete print media trays; and if said plurality of said predefined print attributes do not correlate with said plurality of print media attributes of the print media stored one of said one or more discrete print media trays, assigning one or more of said plurality of said predefined printed attributes to one of said one or more discrete print media trays.
There is provided a graphical user interface for associating a tray with stock from one or more media sources displayed on a display screen including a depiction of a printing system shown on the display screen including at least one tray icon; a depiction of a pathway access window including one or more media sources; a depiction of stock icons on the display screen associated with one or more media sources.
There is also provided a printing system for printing image data received from a computer network, scanner or other image data generating device on a support material, comprising:a supply unit having a plurality of feeders, wherein each feeder has at least one tray for storing support material; a controller including: a system controller processing the received image data; and a user interface comprising:a depiction of a printing system shown on the display screen including at least one tray icon.
A depiction of a pathway access window including one or more media sources; a depiction of stock icons on the display screen associated with one or more media sources; an operator notation tool tip identifying stocks in the one or more media sources when one of the one or more media sources are highlighted; a print engine including: a charging unit charging a surface of a photoconductive belt; at least one exposure unit exposing a photoconductive belt to create an electrostatic latent image based on the received image data at the direction of the system controller; at least one developer unit having charged toner particles, which are attracted to the electrostatic latent image; a transfer unit receiving support material and transferring the toner from the photoreceptor belt to the support material; a fuser assembly receiving the support material from the transfer unit and permanently affixing the toner to the sheet of support material; and a cleaning unit cleaning the photoreceptor belt; and a finishing unit, coupled to the print engine, the finishing unit comprising at least one of a stacker, binder, stapler and inserter.